“It all started with a browser (well, actually it started as search but you know what we mean). After growing out of web pages and applications, Google created the Chrome browser and now the behemoth is leaping beyond that and getting into the computer OS game. Naturally, the search giant’s new cloud-friendly OS is going to be open source and will run on x86 and ARM chips. Google has decided to get its feet wet by targeting the netbook market first, then more capable computers later. The new operating system is intended to be lightweight so that it starts up quickly and you can get going without having to wait too long for items to load up and other processes to run…”

“So finally, Google does something to fight back at the mileage that Microsoft’s Bing has been receiving lately. Nothing fancy on the part of Google really. Just some plain old search verticals which are now being presented in a more organized manner through the Explore Google Search Page...

Take it however way you want, but we can’t escape the fact that intentionally or unintentionally this is Google’s first step towards reengineering its search vertical products and of course Google’s baby steps towards preventing Bing from expanding its userbase further…”

You can read an extensive review of the product over at Google Blogoscoped, but here’s the gist:

Google Translator Kit enables anyone to upload documents for a variety of formats (HTML, Microsoft Word, Rich Text, OpenDocument Text and Plain Text), enter the URL for a file on the web or input a direct link to a Wikipedia article or Knol entry. After submission, the text that requires translation is automatically translated in the back-end and subsequently featured in a so-called ‘Workbench’, neatly placing the resulting text in the target language next to the original…

Google will search their translation memory for previous, human translations of the uploaded segment and show the translations in the Search Results tab. Color-coded segments will depict ‘exact’ matches and ‘partial’ matches, so you can edit the text based on the memory as well as previous, human translations. In addition, you can use the computer-generated translation in the Computer Translation tab to jump-start the translation of your current segment…

Besides the self-learning ability of the toolkit, the service also makes it incredibly easy for people to collaborate on translations, bringing a human, crowd-sourced touch to the automated process of Google’s Translate service.”

“Google is taking a step towards taking all the messy, unstructured information on the Web and putting it into neat little, labeled boxes. Literally, that is what Google Squared does. First announced at last month’s Searchology event, Google Squared is now live. You can try it out.

Google Squared is an experimental search engine that is in its own ‘labs.’ It gives you topical search results broken down by categories, something that Bing does in a different way with guided results in the left explore pane. Google Squared is more comparable to Wolfram Alpha in that it is A) really early stage, and B) goes and finds out every facet of a subject based on a single keyword search. But unlike Wolfram Alpha, it does not ‘compute’ answers based on data that it has ingested into its own databases. Its database is the Web.

Does Google Squared crush Wolfram Alpha today? No. But as I originally suggested when it was announced, adding structure to the Web will eventually win out over a self-contained database. Even if it seems primitive today, its approach scales better than Wolfram’s...”

“Google appears to be throwing down the gauntlet in the e-book market.

In discussions with publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York over the weekend, Google signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seeking to control the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle reading device.

Google’s move is likely to be welcomed by publishers who have expressed concerns about Amazon’s aggressive pricing strategy for e-books. Amazon offers Kindle editions of most new best sellers for $9.99, far less than the typical $26 at which publishers sell new hardcovers. In early discussions, Google has said it will allow publishers to set consumer prices…

Google’s e-book retail program would be separate from the company’s settlement with authors and publishers over its book-scanning project, under which Google has scanned more than seven million volumes from several university libraries. A majority of those books are out of print.

The settlement, which is the focus of a Justice Department inquiry about the antitrust implications and is also subject to court review, provides for a way for Google to sell digital access to the scanned volumes.

And Google has already made its 1.5 million public-domain books available for reading on mobile phones as well as the Sony Reader, the Kindle’s largest competitor…”